Tuesday, January 10, 2012

Palestinians, Israel trade accusations

Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman dismissed newly rekindled diplomatic contacts with the Palestinians yesterday, accusing them of poor faith in peacemaking.
Firing back as Israeli and Palestinian envoys prepared a second round of the low-key but potentially decisive exploratory talks later in the day, the Palestinians said Israel was at fault for cementing its hold on the occupied West Bank.
Lieberman, a hardline coalition partner to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who is often sidelined in statecraft, told lawmakers in Jerusalem the Palestinians only agreed to resume contacts last week after being “dragged against their will” to Amman.
The Jordan meeting was the first since direct talks stalled in late 2010, when Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas demanded a halt to Israeli settlement building before negotiations went any further. Israel had previously imposed a partial building freeze.
“They are preparing a groundwork of excuses to shift responsibility for the talks’ failure to Israel,” Lieberman said, according to an official transcript of the parliamentary briefing.
The Jordanian-hosted meeting was attended by the so-called Quartet of peace brokers—the US, European Union, Russia and UN—who on October 26 gave the sides three months to submit their proposals on territory and security.
The Palestinians see an insuperable obstacle in Israel’s expansion of Jewish settlements in the West Bank. They want their own state in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip - territories Israel captured in a 1967 war.
Most countries deem the settlements illegal. Israel disputes this, and says it would keep certain settlement blocs under any peace deal in accordance with understandings reached in 2004 with then-US president George W Bush.
“All sides in the Quartet and our brothers in Jordan see a complete seriousness from the Palestinian side, and an Israeli attempt to turn these negotiations into a waste of time, with an intensified campaign of settlement-building,” said Yasser Abed Rabbo, senior adviser to Abbas.
In Amman, a regional diplomatic source described the second round of talks, held behind closed doors, as a chance to assess longer-term prospects.
“This is even more important” than the introductory meeting, the source said. “We have to see the follow-up, and what comes now.”
Lieberman said that the Palestinians, who last year sidestepped Israel and defied Washington’s censure by applying directly for full UN membership, planned to resume this “internationalisation” campaign after January 26, the target date set by the Quartet.
“Whoever talks about a ‘breakthrough’ with the Palestinians is clueless,” he said, according to the transcript. “The key word is ‘management’ of the conflict with the Palestinians.”
Speaking in the West Bank city of Ramallah, Abed Rabbo said: “We will turn to the international community, and the UN Security Council in any event, not only to condemn settlement construction but to demand direct international intervention to protect the two-state solution.”
Palestinian negotiator Nabil Shaath said his side’s policy was unchanged.
“All these moves are a preventative tactic in order to keep the ball in the Israeli court,” he told Voice of Palestine radio yesterday.
“The Palestinian stance has not changed in terms of not returning to negotiations unless Israel halts settlement activities.”
Netanyahu’s rightwing coalition government leans heavily on settlers and their supporters, which Shaath said meant there was little chance of a breakthrough in talks under the present conditions.
“One cannot pin hopes for a new launch of negotiations under the current Israeli government” which was “dominated” by settler representatives, he said.
Lieberman, himself a settler, also repeated his controversial call for any peace agreement to include a plan to integrate Arabs with Israeli citizenship into a future Palestinian state.
He wants to see Israel’s 1.3mn-strong Arab population and Arab-majority Israeli towns absorbed by a Palestinian state with Israel keeping its settlements in the West Bank in exchange.
“Any future agreement with the Palestinians must include the issue of the Israeli Arabs according to a formula of exchange of territories and populations,” told reporters after the committee meeting.
“Any other arrangement would be collective suicide.”
A Netanyahu spokesman had no immediate reaction to Lieberman’s remarks.
The conservative premier has himself criticised Abbas for seeking a power-sharing pact with rival Hamas Islamists who rule Gaza and reject permanent co-existence with Israel.

Gulf Times

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